From time to time, National Artist Francisco Sionil Jose poses questions like, “What is wrong with us?” or “Why we are so shallow?” And one day I got bristling mad and told him, “Speak for yourself, Frankie!”

Trabajando como una negra. No offense to the blacks (indeed, I only have sympathy and great admiration for them, especially after reading Isabel Wilkinson’s monumental volume on their struggle, “The Warmth of Other Suns”), but that’s how Lola Enchay would have described my own domestic travails, anyway—trabajando como una negra, slaving like a black woman—since losing my help.

I am turning 82, and I thought I should be truthful and update my column head. My friend, Robert Alejandro, once thought it a good idea to open a Facebook or Fan Page or whatever you call it, for his old computer-illiterate friend. I haven’t stopped blaming him. Lately I even learned that one grandchild has been answering that Facebook for me! Dreadful!

I was a cocky 32-year-old creative director in advertising when I did an awful, anti-culture offense against my 80-year-old stepfather. I quit making mano po (the physical and oral gesture of respect for elders) in protest at his involvement in a silly and petty scam that is too embarrassing to mention here.